Where is home?

We've just about finished moving out of the Chino Hills flat to the 3 bedroom house we've rented in Chino. Maggie the cat understands something important.

Maggie doesn't really care whether she is in the flat or the house. What Maggie very much cares about is not being abandoned somewhere. She was pretty jumpy about not seeing Gayle's stuff in the new place. But with Gayle and Stephen in the new place, that's home. The old flat now definitely is not home. She wouldn't be pleased if we left her behind there.

Maggie knows that home is not a location but a family. People, and especially Christians, should have Maggie's understanding.

For us, home is where God is, so if he moves, so does home. "Our Father who is in heaven" means heaven is our home, and nowhere else is.

My friend Bill wondered one day why he would get upset and weepy if the University of Michigan lost a big football game, so he wisely asked God about it. He promptly understood that he was thinking that Michigan was home, that he was from there. He understood, and now he doesn't waste water when Michigan loses big games.

"Our Father who is in heaven" must be the beginning of our prayer, as Jesus rightly stated, because if we don't know that then we can't think straight about anything, and therefore cannot pray straight about anything. We're really nuts when we don't know where home is - and where it isn't. We might say that all idolatry amounts to being wrong about home.